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Key to Victory – Rob Eddy on United Future's 2008 campaign

 Sometimes the most interesting political parties provide the most boring and bland post-election self-analyses in post-election books – witness the latest Green and Maori party chapters – while the most boring parties can offer relatively interesting and insightful chapters. This is certainly the case with the chapter by Rob Eddy on United Future’s campaign in the new post-election book Key to Victory: The New Zealand General Election of 2008 edited by Stephen Levine and Nigel S. Roberts. Eddy writes candidly of the challenges and failures of this middle-of-the-road party, and concludes with a surprisingly honest and downbeat prediction about there being no future for United Future. [Read more below]

Key to Victory – John Pagani on the Progressives' 2008 campaign

Jim Anderton’s Progressive party has found that the more active candidates that it fields in elections, the lower its party vote is. That’s one of the lessons given by Anderton’s former spin doctor, John Pagani, in his chapter in the new post-election book Key to Victory: The New Zealand General Election of 2008 edited by Stephen Levine and Nigel S. Roberts. Pagani provides a fairly analytical and detailed account of the Progressive campaign, as well as a very strong criticism of the Electoral Commission’s role in policing the Electoral Finance Act. [Read more below]

Key to Victory – Rahui Katene on the Maori Party's 2008 campaign

Rahui Katene’s account of the Maori Party’s 2008 election campaign is a rather insubstantial and slight chapter in the new post-election book Key to Victory: The New Zealand General Election of 2008 edited by Stephen Levine and Nigel S. Roberts. At only four pages long it’s the shortest in the book. And, sadly it’s not necessarily a case of ‘quality over quantity’ either – there’s little of interest or insight in Katene’s story. Instead of meaningfulness, there’s lots of vagueness, platitudes and wooly talk from the new MP. For example, she talks about how ‘The concept was that the Maori Party is the voice of the people, the face of the future. We listen to people’ (p.96). [Read more below]

Key to Victory – Damian Edwards on NZ First's 2008 campaign

New Zealand First’s electoral death was one of the major outcomes of the 2008 general election, yet we haven’t seen much analysis of why the party failed (although my attempt can be found here). The party itself is rather secretive and normally rather uncooperative with any such investigation by the media or academics. Partly making up for this lacunae is the very useful chapter by Damian Edwards (an ex-Ministerial Advisor to Winston Peters) on the party’s campaign in the new post-election book Key to Victory: The New Zealand General Election of 2008 edited by Stephen Levine and Nigel S. Roberts. We find out that the main causes of NZ First’s loss were the media and the Labour Party. And NZ First’s “save your grandma” campaign wasn’t successful enough to get the party over the 5% threshold. [Read more below]

Key to Victory – John Boscawen on Act's 2008 campaign

The changing political identity of the Act Party is the core focus of MP John Boscawen in writing about his party’s 2008 election campaign. Most notably, the leader was ‘repositioned’, the party’s oppositional style was dropped, friendships were sought with other minor parties, and controversial positions on Maori and the Treaty were abandoned. And although this sounds like Act were turning into ‘National-lite’, the party then campaigned on the basis that National was becoming ‘Labour-lite’. This is all discussed in the short and concise chapter by John Boscawen in the new post-election book Key to Victory: The New Zealand General Election of 2008 edited by Stephen Levine and Nigel S. Roberts. [Read more below]

Key to Victory – Catherine Delahunty on the Greens' 2008 campaign

The New Zealand post-election books that are published by Victoria University of Wellington always contain chapters written by political party members – usually MPs – and are often a bit hit and miss. When they’re good, the writer will give invaluable insights into how their party ran their campaign, what they were trying to achieve, what went well and what didn’t, etc. Unfortunately, often the party participant isn’t really up to the challenge, and this is certainly the case with Catherine Delahunty’s chapter on the Greens’ campaign. It’s hard to get much out of her chapter in the new post-election book Key to Victory: The New Zealand General Election of 2008 edited by Stephen Levine and Nigel S. Roberts. [Read more below]

Key to Victory – Grant Robertson on Labour's 2008 campaign

Did the Labour Party lose the 2008 election simply due to a ‘benign dismissal’ by a public that wanted to give the other political team a go at running things? Labour MP Grant Robertson thinks so. Robertson, who is a former adviser to Helen Clark and now the MP for Wellington Central, writes about the reasons for Labour’s defeat in his chapter on the Labour campaign in the new post-election book Key to Victory: The New Zealand General Election of 2008 edited by Stephen Levine and Nigel S. Roberts. This blog post briefly relays Robertson’s intelligent, but well-spun chapter, noting a few flaws. [Read more below]

Key to victory – Joyce on National's 2008 campaign

The National Party’s election campaign of 2008 was notable for its relatively non-aggressive attitude to Labour, as well as its boring political advertising. Unlike in 2005 when National posed itself in starkly different terms to Labour via its iwi/Kiwi style contrast billboards, in the next election it decided to play down differences, remove humour from its ads, and to lay off criticising Labour. Campaign manager, Steven Joyce, explains why in his chapter on the National campaign in the new post-election book Key to Victory: The New Zealand General Election of 2008 edited by Stephen Levine and Nigel S. Roberts. The blog post briefly relays Joyce’s insights into the National campaign. [Read more below]

Key to Victory – The impact of the EFA

Throughout the Helen Clark Labour Government’s third term in office, issues of political finance were particularly controversial, culminating with the Electoral Finance Act 2007 (EFA) being widely debated as either a cure or poison for fair elections. But just how much impact did the now-defunct EFA have on the actual 2008 general election campaign? This blog post below is a highly abridged version of the chapter that I wrote entitled ‘The impact of the Electoral Finance Act’ in the new post-election book Key to Victory: The New Zealand General Election of 2008 (edited by Stephen Levine and Nigel S. Roberts). [Read more below]

Key to Victory – The future of minor parties

Under MMP we supposedly have a multi-party system – with a plethora of minor parties giving colour and life to political debate. But the reality is that this image is more of a mirage. Our minor parties are the weakest they’ve been for decades, and it’s not clear that any of the them have an assured future in Parliament. These are the issues examined by Jennifer Curtin and Raymond Miller in their excellent chapter entitled ‘New Zealand’s party system: a multi-party mirage?’ in the new post-election book Key to Victory: The New Zealand General Election of 2008 (edited by Stephen Levine and Nigel S. Roberts). This blog post highlights some of the most interesting points made by Curtin and Miller, including the suggestion of a more limited future for the smaller parties. [Read more below]

Key to Victory – International coverage of the 2008 election

It’s always interesting to see how the rest of the world views New Zealand politics and elections. Sometimes the international media political reports contain gross distortions and various ‘lost in translation’ elements, and other times the media reports and analysis benefits from its distance and its ability to put our politics into a wider context. Therefore it’s fortunate that German journalist and scholar Aljoscha Kertesz has gathered together ‘almost 300 media reports appearing in foreign media’ about the New Zealand general election of 2008 and analysed them, noting some of the examples and trends in his chapter entitled ‘2008: The International media and the election’ in the new post-election book Key to Victory: The New Zealand General Election of 2008 (edited by Stephen Levine and Nigel S. Roberts). This blog post highlights some of the most interesting points and examples made in this unusual but very welcome chapter. In particular, it highlights the characterisation of the 2008 context as seemingly both ‘lackluster’ and ‘ugly’ [Read more below]

Key to Victory – Colin James on the 2008 election

Why was Labour turfed out of office in 2008? Colin James puts down the Government’s electoral decline to Labour’s ‘failure of political management’ in areas such as the Electoral Finance Act and the so-called anti-smacking bill, as well as generally being punished for pushing a heavy socially liberal agenda. Labour also lost the electoral fight to show that it was the toughest on law and order. James says that the victorious National Party got there due to John Key’s ‘bland leading the bland’ strategy, which now results in a managerial ‘government by MBA’. James writes about these issue and others in a chapter entitled ‘2008: The last baby-boomer election’ in the new post-election book Key to Victory: The New Zealand General Election of 2008 (edited by Stephen Levine and Nigel S. Roberts). This blog post highlights some of the salient points made in this chapter. [Read more below]

Key to Victory – Jon Johansson on political change in the 2008 election

Although the 2008 New Zealand general election led to a change of government, it wasn’t exactly a big-change election. Rather than heralding a complete change of policy direction, the election mostly offered more of the same. These points are well made in a chapter entitled ‘Leadership during transition’ by Jon Johansson in the new post-election book Key to Victory: The New Zealand General Election of 2008 (edited by Stephen Levine and Nigel S. Roberts). Johansson also looks at the question of ‘What drives political change in New Zealand?’ and whether there has been any sort of generational shift in political leadership. [Read more below]

Key to Victory – Media coverage of the 2008 NZ election

Commercialism Vs Professionalism. That’s the tension present in modern media coverage of politics according to Babak Bahador, who’s written a very good chapter entitled ‘Media coverage of the election’ in the new post-election book Key to Victory: The New Zealand General Election of 2008 (edited by Stephen Levine and Nigel S. Roberts). Bahador asks, ‘So how did the New Zealand media balance these forces during the 2008 election? Did they follow commercial trends in other Western democracies towards increasingly partisan, negative, presidential and superficial coverage? Or did they maintain a reasonable degree of professionalism in their coverage and fulfil their democratic duty?’. He attempts to answer these questions with a comprehensive content analysis of the New Zealand Herald, Dominion Post, the Press, and TV1 and TV3 evening news. He comes up with some very interesting results. [Read more below]

Key to Victory – Political imagery in 2008

The Labour Party thought that the 2008 New Zealand general election would be won on the issue of trust (i.e. voters becoming suspicious of ‘slippery John’ and his ‘hidden agenda’), whereas National thought it would be won on the issue of leadership personality and engagement with voters (i.e. the idea of Helen Clark being an out-of-touch elitist vs ‘common John’ who could relate socially to ordinary Kiwis). In the end, Labour was wrong and National was right, and critical ‘image events’ helped determine National’s win according to Claire Robinson’s chapter entitled ‘Images of political leadership in the campaign’ in the new post-election book Key to Victory: The New Zealand General Election of 2008 (edited by Stephen Levine and Nigel S. Roberts) In fact, National effectively won the election back in mid-2007 by fighting and winning on the issue of leadership personality. [Read more below]

Key to Victory – Opinion polls and prediction markets

During an election campaign, when we want to know the likely outcomes, we normally look to the five main voter opinion polls that are published by the mainstream media. But as Shaun McGirr and Rob Salmond argue in their chapter in the new post-election book Key to Victory: The New Zealand General Election of 2008 (edited by Stephen Levine and Nigel S. Roberts) there are some problems with these established opinion polls, and in the 2008 election there were ‘two emerging challengers: “polls-of-polls” and election prediction markets’. Their chapter asks ‘which sources of political information New Zealanders should trust in election campaigns’?, finding that ‘some of the options are substantially superior to others’. [Read more below]

Levine and Roberts on the 2008 NZ general election

National won the 2008 New Zealand general election because it ran a relatively conservative election campaign, promised little real change, but most importantly, it was an attractive option because it would be ‘a government not led by Helen Clark’.  The whole campaign fight was largely about Clark and the unpopular perception of the politically correct regime she had established. The result was a new National Government that is spectacularly diverse in its makeup. This is what Victoria University of Wellington political scientists Stephen Levine and Nigel Roberts say in a new academic chapter about the election. Entitled ‘The General Election of 2008’, Levine and Roberts’ chapter is in the just published fifth edition of New Zealand Government and Politics, edited by Raymond Miller. The chapter is also notable for uncovering some interesting facts about the 2008 election campaign and the resulting Parliament. This blog post highlights some of these things. [Read more below]

Conclusions about the 2008 election campaign

New Zealand’s fifth MMP general election in 2008 was, according to the main party slogans, a contest between ‘trust’ and ‘a brighter future’. It was also one of the least dynamic and policy-oriented in living memory. The highly-professionalized strategies meant that it was certainly no contest of ideas or broadly different political options for voters. Despite the usual electoral hyperbole, the programmatic differences were more blurred than ever. This was especially noticeable in economic policy, with seemingly interchangeable economic outlooks, and virtually no disagreement on what should be done about the developing economic recession. In the absence of any substantive differences in economics, and with few other issues resonating with the public, the campaign came down to a choice of leadership. This is the conclusion of my chapter entitled ‘Party Strategy and the 2008 Election’ which is part of the recently published book Informing Voters? Politics, Media and the New Zealand Election 2008 (edited by Chris Rudd, Janine Hayward and Geoff Craig). The blog post below reproduces the draft conclusion of my chapter. Subsequently the draft chapter was substantially reworked, edited, and condensed for the final book, so please see the published book for the final and ‘authoritative’ version. [Read more below]

The professionalisation of party campaigning

The 2008 general election campaign was both highly professionalized and bland. More than ever before, the New Zealand parties relied on professional campaign tactics and strategy, with the result that the campaign became highly meaningless for many voters, and because there was little to excite or enthuse the public, voter turnout was one of the lowest in over a hundred years. This is the overarching theme of my chapter entitled ‘Party Strategy and the 2008 Election’ which is part of the recently published book Informing Voters? Politics, Media and the New Zealand Election 2008 (edited by Chris Rudd, Janine Hayward and Geoff Craig). The blog post below reproduces the theory-based section of my draft chapter – which I subsequently cut out of the final version. This section explores the professionalisation of politics in New Zealand and how this is manifested in the electoral tactics and strategies of political parties. It argues that the modern professionalised nature of the political parties strongly influenced the dynamics of the 2008 campaign, the techniques utilized to sell the parties, and the ideological choices available to voters. [Read more below]

Maori Party's 2008 campaign

The Maori Party had three related objectives for the 2008 campaign: to win all seven Maori electorates, gain greater recognition as the ‘Treaty partner’ in Parliament, and have a role in the next government. Thus the party sought to project itself as the independent kingmaker of the election, hoping to take up the same strategic position that New Zealand First had held as an important player in past coalition negotiations, able to leverage disproportionate policy gains from the major parties. In order to gain this position, the Maori Party had to carefully construct an image of political neutrality between Labour and National. These are the issues that I focus on in the section on the Maori Party within my chapter entitled ‘Party Strategy and the 2008 Election’ which is part of the recently published book Informing Voters? Politics, Media and the New Zealand Election 2008 (edited by Chris Rudd, Janine Hayward and Geoff Craig). This blog post is the 12th of a series of explorations of the chapters from the new book, and it constitutes the original draft section about the Maori Party that I wrote for my chapter. Subsequently this draft was substantially reworked, edited, and condensed for the final book, so please see the published book for the final and ‘authoritative’ version. [Read more below]

Act’s 2008 election campaign

Of all the minor parties, Act was the most ideally placed to gain from the centrist transformation of the National Party under John Key. National’s shift into the centre of the political spectrum meant that – unlike when Don Brash led National in 2005 – Act had a large potential market of voters on the right to win. Act did make use of that gap in the market, but was ambivalent and ambiguous about it orientation towards the popular centrist National Party, choosing sometimes to hug its rival and sometimes to bite it. In regards to this, I look at the party’s strategy in the section on the Act Party within my chapter entitled ‘Party Strategy and the 2008 Election’ which is part of the recently published book Informing Voters? Politics, Media and the New Zealand Election 2008 (edited by Chris Rudd, Janine Hayward and Geoff Craig). This blog post is the 11th of a series of explorations of the chapters from the new book, and it constitutes the original draft section about Act that I wrote for my chapter. Subsequently this draft was substantially reworked, edited, and condensed for the final book, so please see the published book for the final and ‘authoritative’ version. [Read more below]

NZ First’s 2008 election campaign

Of all the parliamentary parties, New Zealand First’s 2008 election campaign was possibly the most impressive and successful. Obviously the party failed to make it back into Parliament, yet it only just missed out, managing to elevate its public support up from within the ‘margin of error’ of the opinion polls, to 4.1 per cent. The party obtained the fourth highest party vote, and was only denied representation in the new Parliament because of the exclusionary and undemocratic five per cent MMP threshold. New Zealand First actually won a greater proportion of the party vote than both the Act Party and the Maori Party (both of whom were allocated five seats each). Thus, by nearly making it back into Parliament, New Zealand First’s performance belied the projections of most political commentators. I look at the party’s strategy in the section on New Zealand First within my chapter entitled ‘Party Strategy and the 2008 Election’ which is part of the recently published book Informing Voters? Politics, Media and the New Zealand Election 2008 (edited by Chris Rudd, Janine Hayward and Geoff Craig). This blog post is the 10th of a series of explorations of the chapters from the new book, and it constitutes the original draft section about New Zealand First that I wrote for my chapter. Subsequently this draft was substantially reworked, edited, and condensed for the final book, so please see the published book for the final and ‘authoritative’ version. [Read more below]

The Greens’ 2008 election campaign

In 2008 the Green Party was set to become the third largest party in Parliament. To get there the party attempted to take a qualitatively different approach to the past – adopting a highly professsionalised and market-oriented strategy. Taking the ‘Americanisation’ of politics towards its logical conclusion the Green also embraced a very celebrity-focused method of campaigning, while still relying on some traditional minor party media stunts. The party also attempted to break out of its ‘left ghetto’ but with mixed success. These are some of the issues that I focus on in the section on the Green Party within my chapter entitled ‘Party Strategy and the 2008 Election’ which is part of the recently published book Informing Voters? Politics, Media and the New Zealand Election 2008 (edited by Chris Rudd, Janine Hayward and Geoff Craig). This blog post is the ninth of a series of explorations of the chapters from the new book, and it constitutes the original draft section about the Greens that I wrote for my chapter. Subsequently this draft was substantially reworked, edited, and condensed for the final book, so please see the published book for the final and ‘authoritative’ version. [Read more below]

Labour’s 2008 election campaign

The Labour Party’s 2008 general election campaign strategy had two main flaws: its decision to campaign on the theme of trust (together with a general negativity), and its management of coalition party possibilities. Not only did these strategies fail to fire during the campaign, but instead backfired, contributing to Labour’s failure to remain a truly competitive player in the election. These are the issues that I focus on in the section on the Labour Party within my chapter entitled ‘Party Strategy and the 2008 Election’ which is part of the recently published book Informing Voters? Politics, Media and the New Zealand Election 2008 (edited by Chris Rudd, Janine Hayward and Geoff Craig). This blog post is the eighth of a series of explorations of the chapters from the new book, and it constitutes the original draft section about Labour that I wrote for my chapter. Subsequently this draft was substantially reworked, edited, and condensed for the final book, so please see the published book for the final and ‘authoritative’ version. [Read more below]

National’s 2008 election campaign

The National Party’s 2008 general election campaign strategy was widely criticised for being conservative and uninspiring. There were three main integral elements that contributed to this blandness: an ideologically-centrist election platform, a relatively policy-free approach, and a general ultra-cautious attempt to avoid mistakes or cause offence to any voters. These are the issues that I focus on in the section on the National Party within my chapter entitled ‘Party Strategy and the 2008 Election’ which is part of the recently published book Informing Voters? Politics, Media and the New Zealand Election 2008 (edited by Chris Rudd, Janine Hayward and Geoff Craig). This blog post is the seventh of a series of explorations of the chapters from the new book, and it constitutes the original draft section about National that I wrote for my chapter. Subsequently this draft was substantially reworked, edited, and condensed for the final book, so please see the published book for the final and ‘authoritative’ version. [Read more below]

Leaders debates and interviews in the 2008 NZ election

Which of Labour and National instigated last years’ blocking of minor parties from the TV leaders election debates? The answer is in a chapter by Geoffrey Craig entitled ‘Leaders’ Debates and News Media Interviews’, which is in the recently published book Informing Voters? Politics, Media and the New Zealand Election 2008 (edited by Chris Rudd, Janine Hayward and Geoff Craig of the University of Otago Politics department). This blog post is the sixth of a series of explorations of the chapters from the new book (which I also have a chapter in). Craig has put together a chapter that nicely chronicles the various debates that played a central role in the 2008 election campaign. [Read more below]

epolitics in the 2008 NZ election

How well were electronic forms of politics utilised in last year’s general election? How effectively did the political parties and electorate candidates use websites, email, social networking in their campaigning? What about bloggers and the mainstream media? These questions are addressed in a chapter by Peter John Chen about ‘the role, use and impact of online media in New Zealand’s 2008 election’, published in Informing Voters? Politics, Media and the New Zealand Election 2008 (edited by Chris Rudd, Janine Hayward and Geoff Craig of the University of Otago Politics department). This blog post is the fourth of a series of explorations of the chapters from the new book (which I also have a chapter in). [Read more below]

The Maori Party and newspaper coverage in the 2008 NZ election

Newspaper coverage of Maori issues and the Maori Party during last years’ election campaign was very fair and reasonable according to a chapter by Ann Sullivan in the just published book Informing Voters? Politics, Media and the New Zealand Election 2008 (edited by Chris Rudd, Janine Hayward and Geoff Craig of the University of Otago Politics department). This blog post is the third of a series of explorations of the chapters from the new book (which I also have a chapter in). Sullivan says in her chapter that the 2008 media reporting was significantly better than in 2005 when sub-editing in particular relied on stereotypes and negativities. In 2008 the print media seemed more positive and ‘was generally fair, objective and reasonable’. [Read more below]

Newspaper coverage of the 2008 NZ election

How well did the daily newspapers cover the 2008 election campaign? Did readers get good, substantial information to make informed choices between parties? Or did the papers focus on the personalities and events, and more superficial aspects of the campaign? Was the ‘horse race’ given greater coverage than policy? Was ‘there a structural bias towards coverage of the major players?’ The answers are found in a chapter by Otago University’s Chris Rudd and Janine Hayward in the just published book Informing Voters? Politics, Media and the New Zealand Election 2008 (edited by Chris Rudd, Janine Hayward and Geoff Craig of the University of Otago Politics department). This blog post is the second of a series of explorations of the chapters from the new book (which I also have a chapter in). In their comprehensive chapter Rudd and Hayward use a content analysis of four of New Zealand’s most popular newspapers published during the last month of the campaign [Read more below]

Helen Clark biography out soon

The long-awaited publication of Denis Welch’s biography of Helen Clark is almost over. Welch has just blogged to say that "Helen Clark: a Political Life" will be out in 16 days time – Friday 31 July. While I doubt that Welch’s bio will be critical enough for me, I do expect that it will be a highly intelligent and relatively critical account. It’d be an important book, especially because, as the publisher’s blurb argues, ‘Remarkably, no proper political biography of Helen Clark has been written before’. And a recent posting on Denis Welch’s great Opposable Thumb blog, foreshadows an insightful and interesting examination of contemporary New Zealand politics – he argues against this idea that the politics of Helen Clark and Labour are significantly different to that of National. [Read more below]

Television coverage of the 2008 NZ election

How well did TV1 and TV3 cover the 2008 election campaign? Was it banal and superficial? Or in depth and serious? What issues were covered by TV? Which leaders got the best coverage? The answers are found in a chapter by Massey University’s Associate Professor Margie Comrie in the just published book Informing Voters? Politics, Media and the New Zealand Election 2008 (edited by Chris Rudd, Janine Hayward and Geoff Craig of the University of Otago Politics department). This blog post is the first of a series of explorations of the chapters from the new book (which I also have a chapter in). In her comprehensive chapter Comrie uses a content analysis of the official campaign period ‘to examine some questions about the quantity and quality of coverage and about the role of the two channels as providers of information and entertainment, as watchdogs or even junkyard dogs’. She has a lot of positive things to say, but also laments the shift towards an emphasis on individual politicians, especially the leaders of the two dominant parties, the focus on superficial campaign events, and the talking up of fleeting political ‘scandals’ rather than actually covering policies. [Read more below]

No heresy here – the Golden Compass reviewed

Imagine the cinematic release of The Golden Compass being accompanied by a direct marketing strategy to sell the film to critically minded, libertarian-loving atheists. Picture meeting halls of humanist, rationalists and anti-authoritarian activists lapping up well selected snippets from this fantasy movie. [Read more of John Moore’s guest film review below]

[NZ intellectuals] Laurence Simmons

The editor of Speaking Truth to Power (Auckland University Press, 2007), Laurence Simmons has performed a huge service to both politics and the left in New Zealand by putting together his book about the decline of the life of ideas in this country. He argues that ‘Not all intellectuals are academics, and not all academics are intellectuals’ [Read more below]

No Left turn: 'any student of politics or history should read' it

The conservative Dominion Post newspaper commissioned the rightwing National Party activist David Farrar (of Kiwiblog) to review Chris Trotter's leftwing No Left Turn history, and the result is an almost ecstatic endorsement of the book, with Farrar proclaiming that it's a book that 'any student of politics or history should read', and that it's 'one of those books which you find hard to put down'. [Read more below]

No Left Turn: 'helping us understand the world we live in'

Leftwing journalist Nicky Hager has reviewed fellow leftwing journalist Chris Trotter's No Left Turn and concludes that it's 'an excellent, readable, thought-provoking book'. This review published in the Listener - see Power & the people - concentrates on how No Left Turn is a history book with great relevance for understanding modern New Zealand politics. [Read more below]

No Left Turn: 'fervent, thorough, and idiosyncratic'

Chris Trotter's No Right Turn is approvingly described in the latest University of Otago's Critic magazine as 'a fervent, thorough, and idiosyncratic account' of NZ history. Not so much a review, as a springboard for dealing with the state of the NZ left and the union movement, Writing left-handed by Matthew Littlewood interviews leftists Trotter, Brian Roper and Matt McCarten about past and present politics. [Read more below]

No Left Turn: a defence of the new ‘distorters of history’

A critical review of Chris Trotter's book No Left Turn, by guest blogger John Moore.

A class-centred historical analysis is a rare thing in New Zealand today. The clash of classes that dominated much of this young nation’s 20th Century political landscape seems to have been discarded by most contemporary political commentators and academics to the dustbin of history. Chris Trotter is therefore to be commended for trying to do justice to the history of the working class movement in this country with his tome, No Left Turn. But he is also to be challenged for his defence of the new ‘distorters of history’. [Read more below]

The Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality

The title says it all: "The Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality". This is a new book recently published in America that makes a very strong argument against identity politics in favour of a more class-oriented leftwing project. A very good review of the book can be read in the US Observer newspaper online in part one and part two. [Read more below]